31

The Warto End War

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1917–1918

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must beplanted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have noselfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no

indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for thesacrifices we shall freely make.

WOODROW WILSON, WAR MESSAGE, APRIL 2, 1917

Destiny dealt cruelly with Woodrow Wilson. Thelover of peace, as fate would have it, was forced

to lead a hesitant and peace-loving nation into war.As the last days of 1916 slipped through the hour-glass, the president made one final, futile attempt to mediate between the embattled belligerents. OnJanuary 22, 1917, he delivered one of his most mov-ing addresses, restating America’s commitment toneutral rights and declaring that only a negotiated“peace without victory” would prove durable.

German’s warlords responded with a blow of themailed fist. On January 31, 1917, they announced toan astonished world their decision to wage unre-stricted submarine warfare, sinking all ships,including America’s, in the war zone.

Why this rash act? War with America was the lastthing Germany wanted. But after three ghastly yearsin the trenches, Germany’s leaders decided the dis-

tinction between combatants and noncombatantswas a luxury they could no longer afford. Thus theyjerked on the string they had attached to their Sus-sex pledge in 1916, desperately hoping to bring Eng-land to its knees before the United States enteredthe war. Wilson, his bluff called, broke diplomaticrelations with Germany but refused to move closerto war unless the Germans undertook “overt” actsagainst American lives.

War by Act of Germany

To defend American interests short of war, the presi-dent asked Congress for authority to arm Americanmerchant ships. When a band of midwestern sena-tors launched a filibuster to block the measure,

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Wilson denounced them as a “little group of willfulmen” who were rendering a great nation “helplessand contemptible.” But their obstruction was apowerful reminder of the continuing strength ofAmerican isolationism.

Meanwhile, the sensational Zimmermann notewas intercepted and published on March 1, 1917,infuriating Americans, especially westerners. Ger-man foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann hadsecretly proposed a German-Mexican alliance,tempting anti-Yankee Mexico with veiled promisesof recovering Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

On the heels of this provocation came the long-dreaded “overt” acts in the Atlantic, where GermanU-boats sank four unarmed American merchantvessels in the first two weeks of March. As onePhiladelphia newspaper observed, “the differencebetween war and what we have now is that now wearen’t fighting back.” Simultaneously came the rous-ing news that a revolution in Russia had toppled thecruel regime of the tsars. America could now fightfoursquare for democracy on the side of the Allies,without the black sheep of Russian despotism in theAllied fold.

Subdued and solemn, Wilson at last stoodbefore a hushed joint session of Congress on theevening of April 2, 1917, and asked for a declarationof war. He had lost his gamble that America couldpursue the profits of neutral trade without beingsucked into the ghastly maelstrom. A myth devel-oped in later years that America was dragged unwit-tingly into war by munitions makers and Wall Streetbankers, desperate to protect their profits andloans. Yet the weapons merchants and financierswere already thriving, unhampered by wartime gov-ernment restrictions and heavy taxation. Their slo-

gan might well have been “Neutrality Forever.” Thesimple truth is that British harassment of Americancommerce had been galling but endurable; Ger-many had resorted to the mass killing of civilians.The difference was like that between a gang ofthieves and a gang of murderers. President Wilsonhad drawn a clear, if risky, line against the depreda-tions of the submarine. The German high com-mand, in a last desperate throw of the dice, chose tocross it. In a figurative sense, America’s war declara-tion of April 6, 1917, bore the unambiguous trade-mark “Made in Germany.”

Wilsonian Idealism Enthroned

“It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful peo-ple into war,” Wilson said in his war message. It wasfearful indeed, not least of all because of the formi-dable challenge it posed to Wilson’s leadershipskills. Ironically, it fell to the scholarly Wilson,deeply respectful of American traditions, to shatterone of the most sacred of those traditions by entan-gling America in a distant European war.

How could the president arouse the Americanpeople to shoulder this unprecedented burden? Formore than a century, they had prided themselves ontheir isolationism from the periodic outbursts ofmilitarized violence that afflicted the Old World.Since 1914 their pride had been reinforced by thebountiful profits gained through neutrality. GermanU-boats had now roughly shoved a wavering Amer-ica into the abyss, but ominously, no fewer than sixsenators and fifty representatives (including the firstcongresswoman, Jeannette Rankin of Montana) had

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voted against the war resolution. Wilson could whipup no enthusiasm, especially in the landlockedMidwest, by fighting to make the world safe fromthe submarine.

To galvanize the country, Wilson would have toproclaim more glorified aims. Radiating the spiri-tual fervor of his Presbyterian ancestors, he declaredthe twin goals of “a war to end war” and a crusade“to make the world safe for democracy.” Brandish-ing the sword of righteousness, Wilson virtuallyhypnotized the nation with his lofty ideals. He con-trasted the selfish war aims of the other belligerents,Allied and enemy alike, with America’s shiningaltruism. America, he preached, did not fight for thesake of riches or territorial conquest. The Republicsought only to shape an international order inwhich democracy could flourish without fear ofpower-crazed autocrats and militarists.

In Wilsonian idealism the personality of thepresident and the necessities of history were per-fectly matched. The high-minded Wilson genuinelybelieved in the principles he so eloquently intoned.And probably no other appeal could have success-fully converted the American people from their historic hostility to involvement in Europeansquabbles. Americans, it seemed, could be eitherisolationists or crusaders, but nothing in between.

Wilson’s appeal worked—perhaps too well.Holding aloft the torch of idealism, the presidentfired up the public mind to a fever pitch. “Force,force to the utmost, force without stint or limit,” hecried, while the country responded less elegantlywith “Hang the kaiser.” Lost on the gale was Wilson’searlier plea for “peace without victory.”

Wilson’s Fourteen Potent Points

Wilson quickly came to be recognized as the moralleader of the Allied cause. He scaled a summit ofinspiring oratory on January 8, 1918, when he deliv-ered his famed Fourteen Points Address to anenthusiastic Congress. Although one of his primarypurposes was to keep reeling Russia in the war, Wil-son’s vision inspired all the drooping Allies to makemightier efforts and demoralized the enemy gov-ernments by holding out alluring promises to theirdissatisfied minorities.

The first five of the Fourteen Points were broadin scope. (1) A proposal to abolish secret treaties

pleased liberals of all countries. (2) Freedom of theseas appealed to the Germans, as well as to Ameri-cans who distrusted British sea power. (3) A removalof economic barriers among nations was comfort-ing to Germany, which feared postwar vengeance.(4) Reduction of armament burdens was gratifyingto taxpayers everywhere. (5) An adjustment of colo-nial claims in the interests of both native peoplesand the colonizers was reassuring to the anti-imperialists.

Other points among the fourteen proved to beno less seductive. They held out the hope of inde-pendence (“self-determination”) to oppressedminority groups, such as the Poles, millions ofwhom lay under the heel of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The capstone point, number fourteen,foreshadowed the League of Nations—an interna-tional organization that Wilson dreamed would pro-vide a system of collective security. Wilson earnestlyprayed that this new scheme would effectively guar-antee the political independence and territorialintegrity of all countries, whether large or small.

Yet Wilson’s appealing points, though raisinghopes the world over, were not everywhere ap-plauded. Certain leaders of the Allied nations, withan eye to territorial booty, were less than enthusias-tic. Hard-nosed Republicans at home grumbled,and some of them openly mocked the “fourteencommandments” of “God Almighty Wilson.”

Creel Manipulates Minds

Mobilizing people’s minds for war, both in Americaand abroad, was an urgent task facing the Washing-ton authorities. For this purpose the Committee onPublic Information was created. It was headed by ayoungish journalist, George Creel, who, though out-spoken and tactless, was gifted with zeal and imagi-nation. His job was to sell America on the war andsell the world on Wilsonian war aims.

The Creel organization, employing some150,000 workers at home and overseas, proved thatwords were indeed weapons. It sent out an army of75,000 “four-minute men”—often longer-windedthan that—who delivered countless speeches con-taining much “patriotic pep.”

Creel’s propaganda took varied forms. Posterswere splashed on billboards in the “Battle of theFences,” as artists “rallied to the colors.” Millions of

The Fourteen Points 707

leaflets and pamphlets, which contained the mostpungent Wilsonisms, were showered like confettiupon the world. Propaganda booklets with red-white-and-blue covers were printed by the millions.

Hang-the-kaiser movies, carrying such titles asThe Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin and To Hell with theKaiser, revealed the helmeted “Hun” at his bloodiest.Arm-waving conductors by the thousands led hugeaudiences in songs that poured scorn on the enemyand glorified the “boys” in uniform.

The entire nation, catching the frenzied spirit of areligious revival, burst into song. This was undoubt-edly America’s singingest war. Most memorable wasGeorge M. Cohan’s spine-tingling “Over There”:

Over there, over thereSend the word, send the word over there,That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are comingThe drums rum-tumming ev’rywhere.

Creel typified American war mobilization,which relied more on aroused passion and volun-tary compliance than on formal laws. But he over-sold the ideals of Wilson and led the world to expecttoo much. When the president proved to be a mortaland not a god, the resulting disillusionment both athome and abroad was disastrous.

Enforcing Loyalty and Stifling Dissent

German-Americans numbered over 8 million,counting those with at least one parent foreign-born, out of a total population of 100 million. On thewhole they proved to be dependably loyal to theUnited States. Yet rumormongers were quick tospread tales of spying and sabotage; even trifling epi-demics of diarrhea were blamed on German agents.A few German-Americans were tarred, feathered,and beaten; in one extreme case a German Socialistin Illinois was lynched by a drunken mob.

As emotion mounted, hysterical hatred of Ger-mans and things Germanic swept the nation.Orchestras found it unsafe to present German-composed music, like that of Wagner or Beethoven.German books were removed from library shelves,and German classes were canceled in high schoolsand colleges. Sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage,”hamburger “liberty steak.” Even beer became sus-pect, as patriotic Americans fretted over the loyaltyof breweries with names like Schlitz and Pabst.

Both the Espionage Act of 1917 and the SeditionAct of 1918 reflected current fears about Germansand antiwar Americans. Especially visible amongthe 1,900 prosecutions undertaken under these lawswere antiwar Socialists and members of the radicalIndustrial Workers of the World (IWW). KingpinSocialist Eugene V. Debs was convicted under theEspionage Act in 1918 and sentenced to ten years ina federal penitentiary. IWW leader William D. (“BigBill”) Haywood and ninety-nine associates weresimilarly convicted. Virtually any criticism of thegovernment could be censored and punished. Somecritics claimed the new laws were bending, if notbreaking, the First Amendment. But in Schenck v.United States (1919), the Supreme Court affirmed

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their legality, arguing that freedom of speech couldbe revoked when such speech posed a “clear andpresent danger” to the nation.

These prosecutions form an ugly chapter in thehistory of American civil liberty. With the dawn ofpeace, presidential pardons were rather freelygranted, including President Harding’s to EugeneDebs in 1921. Yet a few victims lingered behind barsinto the 1930s.

The Nation’s Factories Go to War

Victory was no foregone conclusion, especially sincethe Republic, despite ample warning, was caughtflat-footedly unready for its leap into global war. Thepacifistic Wilson had only belatedly backed somemild preparedness measures beginning in 1915,including the creation of a civilian Council ofNational Defense to study problems of economicmobilization. He had also launched a shipbuildingprogram (as much to capture the belligerents’ war-disrupted foreign trade as to anticipate America’spossible entry into the war) and endorsed a modestbeefing-up of the army, which with 100,000 regularsthen ranked about fifteenth among the armies of theworld, in the same category with Persia’s. It wouldtake a herculean effort to marshal America’s dauntingbut disorganized resources and throw them into thefield quickly enough to bolster the Allied war effort.

Towering obstacles confronted economicmobilizers. Sheer ignorance was among the biggestroadblocks. No one knew precisely how much steelor explosive powder the country was capable of pro-ducing. Old ideas also proved to be liabilities, as tra-ditional fears of big government hamstrung effortsto orchestrate the economy from Washington.States’ rights Democrats and businesspeople alikebalked at federal economic controls, even thoughthe embattled nation could ill afford the freewheel-ing, hit-or-miss chaos of the peacetime economy.

Late in the war, and after some bruising politicalbattles, Wilson succeeded in imposing some orderon this economic confusion. In March 1918 heappointed lone-eagle stock speculator BernardBaruch to head the War Industries Board. But theWar Industries Board never had more than feebleformal powers, and it was disbanded within daysafter the armistice. Even in a globe-girdling crisis,the American preference for laissez-faire and for aweak central government proved amazingly strong.

Workers in Wartime

Spurred by the slogan, “Labor Will Win the War,”American workers sweated their way to victory. Inpart they were driven by the War Department’s“work or fight” rule of 1918, which threatened anyunemployed male with being immediately drafted—

Mobilizing the Economy 709

a powerful discouragement to go on strike. But forthe most part, government tried to treat labor fairly.The National War Labor Board, chaired by formerpresident Taft, exerted itself to head off labor dis-putes that might hamper the war effort. While press-ing employers to grant concessions to labor,including high wages and the eight-hour day, theboard stopped short of supporting labor’s mostimportant demand: a government guarantee of theright to organize into unions.

Fortunately for the Allied cause, Samuel Gom-pers and his American Federation of Labor (AF of L)loyally supported the war, though some smaller andmore radical labor organizations, including theIndustrial Workers of the World, did not. The IWW,known as the “Wobblies” and sometimes derided asthe “I Won’t Works,” engineered some of the mostdamaging industrial sabotage, and not without rea-

son. As transient laborers in such industries as fruitand lumber, the Wobblies were victims of some ofthe shabbiest working conditions in the country.When they protested, many were viciously beaten,arrested, or run out of town.

Mainstream labor’s loyalty was rewarded. Atwar’s end, the AF of L had more than doubled itsmembership, to over 3 million, and in the mostheavily unionized sectors—coal mining, manufac-turing, and transportation—real wages (afteradjusting for inflation) had risen more than 20 percent over prewar levels. A new day seemed to bedawning for the long-struggling union movement.

Yet labor harbored grievances. Recognition ofthe right to organize still eluded labor’s grasp. War-time inflation threatened to eclipse wage gains(prices more than doubled between 1914 and1920). Not even the call of patriotism and Wilsonianidealism could defuse all labor disputes. Some sixthousand strikes, several stained by blood, broke

710 CHAPTER 31 The War to End War, 1917–1918

out in the war years. In 1919 the greatest strike inAmerican history rocked the steel industry. Morethan a quarter of a million steelworkers walked offtheir jobs in a bid to force their employers to recog-nize their right to organize and bargain collectively.The steel companies resisted mercilessly. Theyrefused to negotiate with union representatives and brought in thirty thousand African-Americanstrikebreakers to keep the mills running. After bit-ter confrontations that left more than a dozenworkers dead, the steel strike collapsed, a grievoussetback that crippled the union movement formore than a decade.

The black workers who entered the steel mills in1919 were but a fraction of the tens of thousands ofsouthern blacks drawn to the North in wartime bythe magnet of war-industry employment. Thesemigrants made up the small-scale beginnings of agreat northward African-American trek that wouldeventually grow to massive proportions. Their sudden appearance in previously all-white areassometimes sparked interracial violence. An explo-sive riot in East St. Louis, Missouri, in July 1917 left

nine whites and at least forty blacks dead. Anequally gruesome race riot ripped through Chicago.The wartime Windy City was taut with racial tensionas a growing black population expanded into whiteworking-class neighborhoods and as African-Americans found jobs as strikebreakers in meat-packing plants. Triggered by an incident at a bathingbeach in July 1919, a reign of terror descended onthe city for nearly two weeks. Black and white gangsroamed Chicago’s streets, eventually killing fifteenwhites and twenty-three blacks.

Suffering Until Suffrage

Women also heeded the call of patriotism andopportunity. Thousands of female workers floodedinto factories and fields, taking up jobs vacated bymen who left the assembly line for the frontline. Butthe war split the women’s movement deeply. Manyprogressive-era feminists were pacifists, inclined tooppose the participation both of America in the warand women in the war effort. This group found avoice in the National Woman’s party, led by Quakeractivist Alice Paul, which demonstrated against“Kaiser Wilson” with marches and hunger strikes.

Wartime Workers 711

In an open address to Congress in 1917,suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947)capitalized on the idealism of the day andinvoked the founding principles of Americandemocracy in arguing the case for women’sright to vote:

“How can our nation escape the logic it has never failed to follow, when its lastunenfranchised class calls for the vote?Behold our Uncle Sam floating the bannerwith one hand, ‘Taxation without represen-tation is tyranny,’ and with the other seizingthe billions of dollars paid in taxes by womento whom he refuses ‘representation.’ . . . Isthere a single man who can justify suchinequality of treatment, such outrageousdiscrimination? Not one. . . .”

But the larger part of the suffrage movement,represented by the National American Woman Suf-frage Association, supported Wilson’s war. Leadersechoed Wilson’s justification for fighting by arguingthat women must take part in the war effort to earna role in shaping the peace. The fight for democracyabroad was women’s best hope for winning truedemocracy at home.

War mobilization gave new momentum to thesuffrage fight. Impressed by women’s war work, Presi-dent Wilson endorsed woman suffrage as “a vitallynecessary war measure.” In 1917 New York voted forsuffrage at the state level; Michigan, Oklahoma, andSouth Dakota followed. Eventually the groundswellcould no longer be contained. In 1920, eighty yearsafter the first calls for suffrage at Seneca Falls, theNineteenth Amendment was ratified, giving all Amer-ican women the right to vote. (See the Appendix.)

Despite political victory, women’s wartime eco-nomic gains proved fleeting. Although a permanentWomen’s Bureau did emerge after the war in theDepartment of Labor to protect women in the work-place, most women workers soon gave up their warjobs. Meanwhile, Congress affirmed its support forwomen in their traditional role as mothers when itpassed the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act of 1921,providing federally financed instruction in maternaland infant health care.

Feminists continued to flex their political mus-cle in the postwar decade, especially in campaigns

712 CHAPTER 31 The War to End War, 1917–1918

for laws to protect women in the workplace andprohibit child labor. Complete success often eludedthem in those crusades, but the developments ofthe World War I era nevertheless foreshadowed afuture when women’s wage-labor and politicalpower would reshape the American way of life.

Forging a War Economy

Mobilization relied more on the heated emotions ofpatriotism than on the cool majesty of the laws. Thelargely voluntary and somewhat haphazard charac-ter of economic war organization testified unequivo-cally to ocean-insulated America’s safe distance fromthe fighting—as well as to the still-modest scale ofgovernment powers in the progressive-era Republic.

As the larder of democracy, America had to feeditself and its allies. By a happy inspiration, the manchosen to head the Food Administration was theQuaker-humanitarian Herbert C. Hoover. He wasalready considered a hero because he had success-fully led a massive charitable drive to feed the starv-ing people of war-racked Belgium.

In common with other American war adminis-trators, Hoover preferred to rely on voluntary com-pliance rather than on compulsory edicts. Hedeliberately rejected issuing ration cards, a practiceused in Europe. Instead he waged a whirlwind prop-aganda campaign through posters, billboards,newspapers, pulpits, and movies. To save food forexport, Hoover proclaimed wheatless Wednesdaysand meatless Tuesdays—all on a voluntary basis.Even children, when eating apples, were urged to be“patriotic to the core.”

The country soon broke out in a rash of veg-etable “victory gardens,” as perspiring patriots hoedtheir way to victory in backyards and vacant lots.Congress severely restricted the use of foodstuffs formanufacturing alcoholic beverages, and the war-spawned spirit of self-denial helped accelerate thewave of prohibition that was sweeping the country.Many leading brewers were German-descended,and this taint made the drive against alcohol all themore popular. The reformers’ dream of a saloonlessnation was finally achieved—temporarily—in 1919with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment,prohibiting all alcoholic drinks.

Thanks to the fervent patriotic wartime spirit,Hoover’s voluntary approach worked. Farm produc-

tion increased by one-fourth, and food exports tothe Allies tripled in volume. Hoover’s methods were widely imitated in other war agencies. TheFuel Administration exhorted Americans to savefuel with “heatless Mondays,” “lightless nights,” and“gasless Sundays.” The Treasury Department spon-sored huge parades and invoked slogans like “Haltthe Hun” to promote four great Liberty Loan drives,followed by a Victory Loan campaign in 1919.Together these efforts netted the then-fantastic sumof about $21 billion, or two-thirds of the current costof the war to the United States. The remainder wasraised by increased taxes, which, unlike the loansubscriptions, were obligatory. (The ultimate bill,

The War Economy 713

including interest and veterans’ benefits, mountedto some $112 billion.)

Pressures of various kinds, patriotic and other-wise, were used to sell bonds. The unfortunate Ger-man-American who could not display a LibertyBond button might find his or her house bedaubedwith yellow paint. A number of reluctant investorsin war bonds were roughly handled. In at least oneinstance, a man signed for a bond with a ropearound his neck.

Despite the Wilson administration’s preferencefor voluntary means of mobilizing the economy, thegovernment on occasion reluctantly exercised itssovereign formal power, notably when it took overthe nation’s railroads following indescribable trafficsnarls in late 1917. Washington also hustled to get itshands on ships. It seized enemy merchant vesselstrapped in America’s harbors and orchestrated agigantic drive to construct new tonnage. A few con-crete vessels were launched, including one appro-priately named Faith. A wooden-ship program wasundertaken, though after months of war, birds werestill nesting in the trees from which the vessels wereto be hammered.

Making Plowboys into Doughboys

Most citizens, at the outset, did not dream of send-ing a mighty force to France. As far as fighting went,America would use its navy to uphold freedom ofthe seas. It would continue to ship war materials tothe Allies and supply them with loans, which finallytotaled nearly $10 billion. But in April and May of1917, the European associates laid their cards on the table. They confessed that they were scrapingthe bottom not only of their money chests but, more ominously, of their manpower barrels. A hugeAmerican army would have to be raised, trained,and transported, or the whole western front wouldcollapse.

Conscription was the only answer to the needfor raising an immense army with all possiblespeed. Wilson disliked a draft, as did many otherAmericans with Civil War memories, but he eventu-ally accepted and eloquently supported conscrip-tion as a disagreeable and temporary necessity.

The proposed draft bill immediately ran into abarrage of criticism in Congress. A congressmanfrom Missouri, deploring compulsion, cried out inprotest that there was “precious little differencebetween a conscript and a convict.” Prophets ofdoom predicted that on draft-registration day, thestreets would run red with blood. At length Con-gress—six weeks after declaring war—grudginglygot around to passing conscription.

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Putting aside grizzly tales of the agonies oftrench warfare, many young American mensaw an opportunity for adventure and seizedit. Author John Dos Passos (1896–1970)recollected how he felt going off to war in1917:

“We had spent our boyhood in the afterglowof the peaceful nineteenth century. . . . Whatwas war like? We wanted to see with ourown eyes. We flocked into the volunteerservices. I respected the conscientiousobjectors, and occasionally felt I should takethat course myself, but hell, I wanted to seethe show.”

The draft act required the registration of allmales between the ages of eighteen and forty-five.No “draft dodger” could purchase his exemption orhire a substitute, as in the days of the Civil War,though the law exempted men in key industries,such as shipbuilding.

The draft machinery, on the whole, workedeffectively. Registration day proved to be a day ofpatriotic pilgrimages to flag-draped registrationcenters, and the sign-up saw no shedding of blood,as some had gloomily predicted. Despite precau-tions, some 337,000 “slackers” escaped the draft,and about 4,000 conscientious objectors wereexcused.

Within a few frantic months, the army grew toover 4 million men. For the first time, women wereadmitted to the armed forces; some 11,000 to thenavy and 269 to the marines. African-Americansalso served in the armed forces, though in strictlysegregated units and usually under white officers.Reflecting racial attitudes of the time, militaryauthorities hesitated to train black men for combat,and the majority of black soldiers were assigned to“construction battalions” or put to work unloadingships.

Recruits were supposed to receive six months oftraining in America and two more months overseas.But so great was the urgency that many doughboyswere swept swiftly into battle scarcely knowing howto handle a rifle, much less a bayonet.

Fighting in France—Belatedly

Russia’s collapse underscored the need for haste.The communistic Bolsheviks, after seizing powerlate in 1917, ultimately withdrew their beaten coun-try from the “capitalistic” war early in 1918. Thissudden defection released hundreds of thousandsof battle-tested Germans from the eastern front fac-ing Russia for the western front in France, where, forthe first time in the war, they were developing a dan-gerous superiority in manpower.

Berlin’s calculations as to American tardinesswere surprisingly accurate. Germany had counted onknocking out Britain six months after the declarationof unlimited submarine warfare, long before Americacould get into the struggle. No really effective Ameri-can fighting force reached France until about a year

Doughboys in France 715

Seine R.

Marne R.

Rhine

R.Coblentz

Cologne

Metz

Paris

BrusselsYpres

Antwerp

Sedan(Meuse-ArgonneOffensive)

VerdunSoissons

Belleau WoodSt. MihielChâteau-Thierry

Cantigny

B E L G I U M

FRANCE

LUX.GERMANY

SWITZERLAND

NETH.

German line, spring 1918

Line of farthest German advance

Points at which United States forces helpedto check or push back German advances

Areas over which American troops advanced

Armistice line

Major U.S. Operations in France, 1918One doughboy recorded in his diary hisbaptism of fire at St. Mihiel: “Hikedthrough dark woods. No lights allowed,guided by holding on the pack of the manahead. Stumbled through underbrush forabout half mile into an open field wherewe waited in soaking rain until about10:00 P.M. We then started on our hiketo the St. Mihiel front, arriving on thecrest of a hill at 1:00 A.M. I saw a sightwhich I shall never forget. It was the zerohour and in one instant the entire frontas far as the eye could reach in eitherdirection was a sheet of flame, while theheavy artillery made the earth quake.”

after Congress declared war. Berlin had also reckonedon the inability of the Americans to transport theirarmy, assuming that they were able to raise one. Hereagain the German predictions were not far from themark, as shipping shortages plagued the Allies.

Nevertheless, France gradually began to bustlewith American doughboys. The first trainees toreach the front were used as replacements in theAllied armies and were generally deployed in quietsectors with the British and French. The newcomerssoon made friends with the French girls—or triedto—and one of the most sung-about women in his-tory was the fabled “Mademoiselle from Armen-tières.” One of the printable stanzas ran

She was true to me, she was true to you,She was true to the whole damned army, too.

American operations were not confined solelyto France; small detachments fought in Belgium,Italy, and notably Russia. The United States, hopingto keep stores of munitions from falling into Ger-man hands when Bolshevik Russia quit fighting,contributed some 5,000 troops to an Allied invasionof northern Russia at Archangel. Wilson likewisesent nearly 10,000 troops to Siberia as part of anAllied expedition, which included more than 70,000

Japanese. Major American purposes were to preventJapan from getting a stranglehold on Siberia, to res-cue some 45,000 marooned Czechoslovak troops,and to snatch military supplies from Bolshevik control. Sharp fighting at Archangel and in Siberiainvolved casualties on both sides, including severalhundred Americans. The Bolsheviks long resentedthese “capitalistic” interventions, which they re-garded as high-handed efforts to suffocate theirinfant communist revolution in its cradle.

America Helps Hammer the “Hun”

The dreaded German drive on the western frontexploded in the spring of 1918. Spearheaded byabout half a million troops, the enemy rolled for-ward with terrifying momentum. So dire was theperil that the Allied nations for the first time unitedunder a supreme commander, the quiet Frenchmarshal Foch, whose axiom was, “To make war is toattack.” Until then the Allies had been fightingimperfectly coordinated actions.

At last the ill-trained “Yanks” were coming—andnot a moment too soon. Late in May 1918, the Ger-

716 CHAPTER 31 The War to End War, 1917–1918

man juggernaut, smashing to within forty miles ofParis, threatened to knock out France. Newly arrivedAmerican troops, numbering fewer than thirty thou-sand, were thrown into the breach at Château-Thierry, right in the teeth of the German advance.This was a historic moment—the first significantengagement of American troops in a European war.Battle-fatigued French soldiers watched incredu-lously as the roads filled with endless truckloads ofAmerican doughboys, singing New World songs atthe top of their voices, a seemingly inexhaustibleflood of fresh and gleaming youth. With their arrival itwas clear that a new American giant had arisen in theWest to replace the dying Russian titan in the East.

American weight in the scales was now beingfelt. By July 1918 the awesome German drive hadspent its force, and keyed-up American men partici-pated in a Foch counteroffensive in the Second Bat-tle of the Marne. This engagement marked thebeginning of a German withdrawal that was nevereffectively reversed. In September 1918 nine Ameri-can divisions (about 243,000 men) joined fourFrench divisions to push the Germans from the St.Mihiel salient, a German dagger in France’s flank.

The Americans, dissatisfied with merely bol-stering the British and French, had meanwhile beendemanding a separate army. General John J. (“BlackJack”) Pershing was finally assigned a front ofeighty-five miles, stretching northwestward fromthe Swiss border to meet the French lines.

As part of the last mighty Allied assault, involv-ing several million men, Pershing’s army undertookthe Meuse-Argonne offensive, from September 26 toNovember 11, 1918. One objective was to cut theGerman railroad lines feeding the western front.This battle, the most gargantuan thus far in Ameri-can history, lasted forty-seven days and engaged 1.2million American troops. With especially heavyfighting in the rugged Argonne Forest, the killed andwounded mounted to 120,000, or 10 percent of theAmericans involved. The slow progress and severelosses from machine guns resulted in part frominadequate training, in part from dashing open-field tactics, with the bayonet liberally employed.

Stopping the German Juggernaut 717

Russia

Germany

France

British Empire

Austria

Italy

United States

MEN KILLED IN BATTLE

1,700,000

1,600,000

1,385,000

900,000

800,000

462,000

53,000

Approximate Comparative Losses in World War I

Tennessee-bred Alvin C. York, a member of an anti-war religious sect, became a hero when he single-handedly killed 20 Germans and captured 132 more.

Victory was in sight—and fortunately so. Theslowly advancing American armies in France wereeating up their supplies so rapidly that they were ingrave danger of running short. But the battered Ger-mans were ready to stagger out of the trenches andcry “Kamerad” (“Comrade”). Their allies weredeserting them, the British blockade was causingcritical food shortages, and the sledgehammerblows of the Allies rained down relentlessly. Propa-ganda leaflets, containing seductive Wilsonianpromises, rained upon their crumbling lines fromballoons, shells, and rockets.

The Fourteen Points Disarm Germany

Berlin was now ready to hoist the white flag. Warnedof imminent defeat by the generals, it turned to thepresumably softhearted Wilson in October 1918,seeking a peace based on the Fourteen Points. Instern responses the president made it clear that thekaiser must be thrown overboard before an armi-stice could be negotiated. War-weary Germans,whom Wilson had been trying to turn against their“military masters,” took the hint. The kaiser wasforced to flee to Holland, where he lived out hisremaining twenty-three years, “unwept, unhonored,and unhung.”

The exhausted Germans were through. Theylaid down their arms at eleven o’clock on theeleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, and aneerie, numbing silence fell over the western front.War-taut America burst into a delirium of around-the-clock rejoicing, as streets were jammed withlaughing, whooping, milling, dancing masses. Thewar to end wars had ended.

The United States’ main contributions to theultimate victory had been foodstuffs, munitions,credits, oil for this first mechanized war, and man-power—but not battlefield victories. The Yanksfought only two major battles, at St. Mihiel and theMeuse-Argonne, both in the last two months of thefour-year war, and they were still grinding away inthe Meuse-Argonne, well short of their objectives,when the war ended. It was the prospect of endlessU.S. troop reserves, rather than America’s actualmilitary performance, that eventually demoralizedthe Germans.

Ironically enough, General Pershing in someways depended more on the Allies than theydepended on him. His army purchased more of itssupplies in Europe than it shipped from the UnitedStates. Fewer than five hundred of Pershing’sartillery pieces were of American manufacture. Vir-tually all his aircraft were provided by the Britishand French. Britain and France transported amajority of the doughboys to Europe. The UnitedStates, in short, was no arsenal of democracy in thiswar; that role awaited it in the next global conflict,two decades later.

Wilson Steps Down from Olympus

Woodrow Wilson had helped to win the war. Whatpart would he now play in shaping the peace?Expectations ran extravagantly high. As the fightingin Europe crashed to a close, the American presi-dent towered at the peak of his popularity andpower. In lonely huts in the mountains of Italy, can-dles burned before poster-portraits of the reveredAmerican prophet. In Poland starry-eyed universitystudents would meet on the streets, clasp hands,and utter only one word: “Wilson.” No other man

718 CHAPTER 31 The War to End War, 1917–1918

had ever occupied so dizzy a pinnacle as moralleader of the world. Wilson also had behind him theprestige of victory and the economic resources ofthe mightiest nation on earth. But at this fatefulmoment, his sureness of touch deserted him, andhe began to make a series of tragic fumbles.

Under the slogan “Politics Is Adjourned,” parti-san political strife had been kept below the surfaceduring the war crisis. Hoping to strengthen his handat the Paris peace table, Wilson broke the truce bypersonally appealing for a Democratic victory in the

congressional elections of November 1918. But themaneuver backfired when voters instead returned anarrow Republican majority to Congress. Havingstaked his reputation on the outcome, Wilson wentto Paris as a diminished leader. Unlike all the parlia-mentary statesmen at the table, he did not com-mand a legislative majority at home.

Wilson’s decision to go in person to Paris to helpmake the peace infuriated Republicans. At that timeno president had traveled to Europe, and Wilson’sjourney looked to his critics like flamboyant grand-standing. He further ruffled Republican featherswhen he snubbed the Senate in assembling hispeace delegation and neglected to include a singleRepublican senator in his official party. The logicalchoice was the new chairman of the Senate Com-mittee on Foreign Relations, slender and aristo-cratically bewhiskered Henry Cabot Lodge ofMassachusetts, a Harvard Ph.D. But includingLodge would have been problematic for the presi-dent. The senator’s mind, quipped one critic, waslike the soil of his native New England: “naturallybarren but highly cultivated.” Wilson loathed him,and the feeling was hotly reciprocated. An accom-plished author, Lodge had been known as the“scholar in politics” until Wilson came on the scene.The two men were at daggers drawn, personally andpolitically.

Wilson the Peacemaker 719

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) favored theGermans’ unconditional surrender. Referringto Wilson’s practice of drafting diplomaticnotes on his own typewriter, Roosevelt tele-graphed several senators (October 24, 1918),

“Let us dictate peace by the hammering gunsand not chat about peace to the accompani-ment of clicking typewriters. The language of the fourteen points and the subsequentstatements explaining or qualifying them are thoroughly mischievous.”

An Idealist Battles the Imperialists in Paris

Woodrow Wilson, the great prophet arisen in theWest, received tumultuous welcomes from themasses of France, England, and Italy late in 1918 andearly in 1919. They saw in his idealism the promise ofa better world. But the statesmen of France and Italywere careful to keep the new messiah at arm’s lengthfrom worshipful crowds. He might so arouse thepeople as to prompt them to overthrow their leadersand upset finespun imperialistic plans.

The Paris Conference of great and small nationsfell into the hands of an inner clique, known as theBig Four. Wilson, representing the richest and fresh-est great power, more or less occupied the driver’sseat. He was joined by genial Premier VittorioOrlando of Italy and brilliant Prime Minister DavidLloyd George of Britain. Perhaps the most realisticof the quartet was cynical, hard-bitten PremierGeorges Clemenceau of France, the seventy-eight-year-old “organizer of victory” known as “the Tiger.”

Speed was urgent when the conference openedon January 18, 1919. Europe seemed to be slippinginto anarchy; the red tide of communism was lick-ing westward from Bolshevist Russia.

Wilson’s ultimate goal was a world parliamentto be known as the League of Nations, but he firstbent his energies to preventing any vengeful parcel-ing out of the former colonies and protectorates ofthe vanquished powers. He forced through a com-promise between naked imperialism and Wilsonianidealism. The victors would not take possession ofthe conquered territory outright, but would receiveit as trustees of the League of Nations. StrategicSyria, for example, was awarded to France, and oil-rich Iraq went to Britain. But in practice this half-loaf solution was little more than the old prewarcolonialism, thinly disguised.

720 CHAPTER 31 The War to End War, 1917–1918

Grave concern was expressed by GeneralTasker H. Bliss (1853–1930), one of the fiveAmerican peace commissioners (December18, 1918):

“I am disquieted to see how hazy and vagueour ideas are. We are going to be up againstthe wiliest politicians in Europe. There will benothing hazy or vague about their ideas.”

Meanwhile, Wilson had been serving as midwifefor the League of Nations, which he envisioned ascontaining an assembly with seats for all nationsand a council to be controlled by the great powers.He gained a signal victory over the skeptical OldWorld diplomats in February 1919, when theyagreed to make the League Covenant, Wilson’sbrainchild, an integral part of the final peace treaty.At one point he spoke with such ardor for his planthat even the hard-boiled newspaper reporters for-got to take notes.

Hammering Out the Treaty

Domestic duties now required Wilson to make aquick trip to America, where ugly storms were brew-ing in the Senate. Certain Republican senators,Lodge in the lead, were sharpening their knives forWilson. To them the League was either a useless“sewing circle” or an overpotent “super-state.” Theirhard core was composed of a dozen or so militantisolationists, led by senators William Borah of Idahoand Hiram Johnson of California, who were knownas “irreconcilables” or “the Battalion of Death.”

Thirty-nine Republican senators or senators-elect—enough to defeat the treaty—proclaimed thatthe Senate would not approve the League of Nationsin its existing imperfect form. These difficultiesdelighted Wilson’s Allied adversaries in Paris. Theywere now in a stronger bargaining position becauseWilson would have to beg them for changes in thecovenant that would safeguard the Monroe Doctrineand other American interests dear to the senators.

As soon as Wilson was back in Paris, hard-headed Premier Clemenceau pressed Frenchdemands for the German-inhabited Rhineland andthe Saar Valley, a rich coal area. Faced with fierceWilsonian opposition to this violation of self-determination, France settled for a compromisewhereby the Saar basin would remain under theLeague of Nations for fifteen years, and then a popu-lar vote would determine its fate.* In exchange fordropping its demands for the Rhineland, France gotthe Security Treaty, in which both Britain and Amer-ica pledged to come to its aid in the event of anotherGerman invasion. The French later felt betrayed

when this pact was quickly pigeonholed by the U.S.Senate, which shied away from all entanglingalliances.

Wilson’s next battle was with Italy over Fiume, avaluable seaport inhabited by both Italians andYugoslavs. When Italy demanded Fiume, Wilsoninsisted that the seaport go to Yugoslavia andappealed over the heads of Italy’s leaders to thecountry’s masses. The maneuver fell flat. The Italiandelegates went home in a huff, while the Italianmasses turned savagely against Wilson.

Another crucial struggle was with Japan overChina’s Shandong (Shantung) Peninsula and the Ger-man islands in the Pacific, which the Japanese hadseized during the war. Japan was conceded the strate-gic Pacific islands under a League of Nations man-date,* but Wilson staunchly opposed Japanese controlof Shandong as a violation of self-determination for its 30 million Chinese residents. But when the

The Treaty of Versailles 721

*The Saar population voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Germanyin 1935.

*In due time the Japanese illegally fortified these islands—theMarshalls, Marianas, and Carolines—and used them as basesagainst the United States in World War II.

Japanese threatened to walk out, Wilson reluctantlyaccepted a compromise whereby Japan kept Ger-many’s economic holdings in Shandong and pledgedto return the peninsula to China at a later date. TheChinese were outraged by this imperialistic solution,while Clemenceau jeered that Wilson “talked likeJesus Christ and acted like Lloyd George.”

The Peace Treaty That Bred a New War

A completed Treaty of Versailles, after more weeks ofwrangling, was handed to the Germans in June1919—almost literally on the point of a bayonet. Ger-many had capitulated on the strength of assurancesthat it would be granted a peace based on the Four-teen Points. A careful analysis of the treaty shows thatonly about four of the twenty-three original Wilson-ian points and subsequent principles were fully hon-ored. Loud and bitter cries of betrayal burst fromGerman throats—charges that Adolf Hitler wouldsoon reiterate during his meteoric rise to power.

Wilson, of course, was guilty of no consciousbetrayal. But the Allied powers were torn by conflict-ing aims, many of them sanctioned by secret treaties.There had to be compromise at Paris, or there wouldbe no agreement. Faced with hard realities, Wilsonwas forced to compromise away some of his less cher-ished Fourteen Points in order to salvage the moreprecious League of Nations. He was much like themother who had to throw her sickly younger childrento the pursuing wolves to save her sturdy firstborn.

A troubled Wilson was not happy with the results.Greeted a few months earlier with frenzied acclaim inEurope, he was now a fallen idol, condemned alike bydisillusioned liberals and frustrated imperialists. Hewas keenly aware of some of the injustices that hadbeen forced into the treaty. But he was hoping thatthe League of Nations—a potent League with Amer-ica as a leader—would iron out the inequities.

Yet the loudly condemned treaty had much tocommend it. Not least among its merits was its lib-eration of millions of minority peoples, such as thePoles, from the yoke of an alien dynasty. Disap-pointing though Wilson’s handiwork was, he savedthe pact from being an old-time peace of graspingimperialism. His critics to the contrary, the settle-ment was almost certainly a fairer one because hehad gone to Paris.

The Domestic Parade of Prejudice

Returning for the second and final time to America,Wilson sailed straight into a political typhoon. Isola-tionists raised a whirlwind of protest against the treaty,especially against Wilson’s commitment to usher theUnited States into his newfangled League of Nations.Invoking the revered advice of Washington and Jeffer-son, they wanted no part of any “entangling alliance.”

Nor were the isolationists Wilson’s only prob-lem. Critics showered the Treaty of Versailles withabuse from all sides.

Rabid Hun-haters, regarding the pact as notharsh enough, voiced their discontent. Principledliberals, like the editors of the New York Nation,thought it too harsh—and a gross betrayal to boot.German-Americans, Italian-Americans, and other“hyphenated” Americans were aroused because thepeace settlement was not sufficiently favorable totheir native lands.

Irish-Americans, traditional twisters of theBritish lion’s tail, also denounced the League. Theyfelt that with the additional votes of the five over-seas British dominions, it gave Britain undue influ-ence, and they feared that it could be used to forcethe United States to crush any rising for Irish inde-pendence. Crowds of Irish-American zealots hissedand booed Wilson’s name.

Wilson’s Tour and Collapse (1919)

Despite mounting discontent, the president hadreason to feel optimistic. When he brought homethe treaty, with the “Wilson League” firmly riveted inas Part I, a strong majority of the people still seemedfavorable. At this time—early July 1919—SenatorLodge had no real hope of defeating the Treaty ofVersailles. His strategy was merely to amend it insuch a way as to “Americanize,” “Republicanize,” or“senatorialize” it. The Republicans could then claimpolitical credit for the changes.

Lodge effectively used delay to muddle anddivide public opinion. He read the entire 264-pagetreaty aloud in the Senate Foreign Relations Com-mittee and held protracted hearings in which peo-ple of various nationalities aired their grievances.

Wilson fretted increasingly as the hot summerof 1919 wore on. The bulky pact was bogged down

722 CHAPTER 31 The War to End War, 1917–1918

in the Senate, while the nation was drifting into con-fusion and apathy. He therefore decided to go to thecountry in a spectacular speechmaking tour. Hewould appeal over the heads of the Senate to thesovereign people—as he often had in the past.

The strenuous barnstorming campaign wasundertaken in the face of protests by physicians andfriends. Wilson had never been robust; he hadentered the White House nearly seven years beforewith a stomach pump and with headache pills forhis neuritis. His frail body had begun to sag underthe strain of partisan strife, a global war, and astressful peace conference. But he declared that hewas willing to die, like the soldiers he had sent intobattle, for the sake of the new world order.

The presidential tour, begun in September 1919,got off to a rather lame start. The Midwest receivedWilson lukewarmly, partly because of strong German-American influence. Trailing after him like blood-hounds came two “irreconcilable” senators, Borahand Johnson, who spoke in the same cities a few dayslater. Hat-tossing crowds answered their attacks onWilson, crying, “Impeach him, impeach him!”

But the reception was different in the RockyMountain region and on the Pacific Coast. Theseareas, which had elected Wilson in 1916, welcomedhim with heartwarming outbursts. The high point—and the breaking point—of the return trip was atPueblo, Colorado, September 25, 1919. Wilson, withtears coursing down his cheeks, pleaded for theLeague of Nations as the only real hope of prevent-ing future wars. That night he collapsed from physi-cal and nervous exhaustion.

Wilson was whisked back in the “funeral train”to Washington, where several days later a stroke par-alyzed one side of his body. During the next fewweeks, he lay in a darkened room in the WhiteHouse, as much a victim of the war as the unknownsoldier buried at Arlington. For more than sevenmonths, he did not meet his cabinet.

Defeat Through Deadlock

Senator Lodge, coldly calculating, was now at thehelm. After failing to amend the treaty outright, hefinally came up with fourteen formal reservations toit—a sardonic slap at Wilson’s Fourteen Points.These safeguards reserved the rights of the UnitedStates under the Monroe Doctrine and the Constitu-tion and otherwise sought to protect American sov-ereignty. Senator Lodge and other critics wereespecially alarmed by Article X of the Leaguebecause it morally bound the United States to aidany member victimized by external aggression. Ajealous Congress wanted to reserve for itself theconstitutional war-declaring power.

Wilson, hating Lodge, saw red at the mere sug-gestion of the Lodge reservations. He was quite will-ing to accept somewhat similar reservationssponsored by his faithful Democratic followers, buthe insisted that the Lodge reservations “emascu-lated” the entire pact.

Although too feeble to lead, Wilson was stillstrong enough to obstruct. When the day finally

The Defeat of Wilson’s Treaty 723

came for the voting in the Senate, he sent word to alltrue Democrats to vote against the treaty with theodious Lodge reservations attached. Wilson hopedthat when these were cleared away, the path wouldbe open for ratification without reservations or withonly some mild Democratic ones.

Loyal Democrats in the Senate, on November19, 1919, blindly did Wilson’s bidding. Combiningwith the “irreconcilables,” mostly Republicans, theyrejected the treaty with the Lodge reservationsappended, 55 to 39.

The nation was too deeply shocked to acceptthe verdict as final. About four-fifths of the senatorsprofessed to favor the treaty, with or without reser-vations, yet a simple majority could not agree on asingle proposition. So strong was public indignationthat the Senate was forced to act a second time. InMarch 1920 the treaty was brought up again, withthe Lodge reservations tacked on.

There was only one possible path to success.Unless the Senate approved the pact with the reser-vations, the entire document would be rejected. Butthe sickly Wilson, still sheltered behind drawn cur-tains and blind to disagreeable realities, again sentword to all loyal Democrats to vote down the treatywith the obnoxious reservations. He thus signed thedeath warrant of the treaty as far as America wasconcerned. On March 19, 1920, the treaty netted asimple majority but failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority by a count of 49 yeas to 35 nays.

Who defeated the treaty? The Lodge-Wilson personal feud, traditionalism, isolationism, disillu-sionment, and partisanship all contributed to theconfused picture. But Wilson himself must bear asubstantial share of the responsibility. He asked for allor nothing—and got nothing. One Democratic sena-tor angrily charged that the president had strangledhis own brainchild with his own palsied hands ratherthan let the Senate straighten its crooked limbs.

The “Solemn Referendum” of 1920

Wilson had his own pet solution for the deadlock,and this partly explains why he refused to compro-mise on Lodge’s terms. He proposed to settle thetreaty issue in the forthcoming presidential cam-paign of 1920 by appealing to the people for a“solemn referendum.” This was sheer folly, for a truemandate on the League in the noisy arena of politicswas clearly an impossibility.

Jubilant Republicans gathered in Chicago inJune 1920 with wayward bull moosers back in thecorral (after Theodore Roosevelt’s death in 1919)and the senatorial Old Guard back in the saddle. Theconvention devised a masterfully ambiguous plat-form that could appeal to both pro-League andanti-League sentiment in the party. The nomineewould run on a teeter-totter rather than a platform.

As the leading presidential contestants joustedwith one another, the political weathervane began toveer toward genial Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio.A group of Senate bosses, meeting rather casually in the historic “smoke-filled” Room 404 of the HotelBlackstone, informally decided on the affable andmalleable Ohioan. Their fair-haired boy was a pros-perous, backslapping, small-town newspaper editorof the “folksy” type, quite the opposite of Wilson, whohad earlier noted the senator’s “disturbingly dull”mind. For vice president the party nominated frugal,grim-faced Governor Calvin (“Silent Cal”) Coolidge ofMassachusetts, who had attracted conservative sup-port by breaking a police strike in Boston.

Meeting in San Francisco, Democrats nomi-nated earnest Governor James M. Cox of Ohio, whostrongly supported the League. His running matewas Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt,a young, handsome, vibrant New Yorker.

Democratic attempts to make the campaign areferendum on the League were thwarted by Sena-tor Harding, who issued muddled and contradictorystatements on the issue from his front porch. Pro-League and anti-League Republicans both claimedthat Harding’s election would advance their cause,while the candidate suggested that if elected hewould work for a vague Association of Nations—aleague but not the League.

With newly enfranchised women swelling thevote totals, Harding was swept into power with aprodigious plurality of over 7 million votes—16,143,407 to 9,130,328 for Cox. The electoral countwas 404 to 127. Eugene V. Debs, federal prisonernumber 9653 at the Atlanta Penitentiary, rolled upthe largest vote ever for the left-wing Socialistparty—919,799.

Public desire for a change found vent in aresounding repudiation of “high-and-mighty”Wilsonism. People were tired of professional high-browism, star-reaching idealism, bothersome do-goodism, moral overstrain, and constant self-sacrifice. Eager to lapse back into “normalcy,” theywere willing to accept a second-rate president—andthey got a third-rate one.

724 CHAPTER 31 The War to End War, 1917–1918

Although the election could not be considered atrue referendum, Republican isolationists success-fully turned Harding’s victory into a death sentencefor the League. Politicians increasingly shunned theLeague as they would a leper. When the legendaryWilson died in 1924, admirers knelt in the snow out-side his Washington home. His “great vision” of aleague for peace had perished long before.

The Betrayal of Great Expectations

America’s spurning of the League was tragicallyshortsighted. The Republic had helped to win acostly war, but it foolishly kicked the fruits of victoryunder the table. Whether a strong internationalorganization would have averted World War II in1939 will always be a matter of dispute. But therecan be no doubt that the orphaned League ofNations was undercut at the start by the refusal ofthe mightiest power on the globe to join it. TheAllies themselves were largely to blame for the newworld conflagration that flared up in 1939, but theyfound a convenient justification for their own short-comings by pointing an accusing finger at UncleSam.

The ultimate collapse of the Treaty of Versaillesmust be laid, at least in some degree, at America’sdoorstep. This complicated pact, tied in with the

four other peace treaties through the LeagueCovenant, was a top-heavy structure designed torest on a four-legged table. The fourth leg, theUnited States, was never put into place. This ricketystructure teetered for over a decade and thencrashed in ruins—a debacle that played into thehands of the German demagogue Adolf Hitler.

No less ominous events were set in motionwhen the Senate spurned the Security Treaty withFrance. The French, fearing that a new generation ofGermans would follow in their fathers’ goose steps,undertook to build up a powerful military force. Pre-dictably resenting the presence of strong Frencharmies, Germany began to rearm illegally. Theseething cauldron of uncertainty and suspicionbrewed an intoxicant that helped inflame the fanati-cal following of Hitler.

The United States, as the tragic sequel proved,hurt its own cause when it buried its head in thesand. Granted that the conduct of its Allies had beendisillusioning, it had its own ends to serve by carry-ing through the Wilsonian program. It would havebeen well advised if it had forthrightly assumed itswar-born responsibilities and had resolutelyembraced the role of global leader proffered by thehand of destiny. In the interests of its own security, iffor no other reason, the United States should haveused its enormous strength to shape world-shakingevents. Instead it permitted itself blythely to drifttoward the abyss of a second and even more bloodyinternational disaster.

A Crippled League of Nations 725

WASH.7

ORE.5

CALIF.13

NEV.3

IDAHO4

MONTANA4

WYO.3

UTAH4 COLO.

6

ARIZ.3

S.D.5

KANSAS10

OKLA.10

MICH.15

N.Y.45

N.D.5 MINN.

12

IOWA13NEBR.

8

MO.18

ARK.9

LA.10

TEXAS20

N.M.3 MISS.

10

ALA.12 GA.

14

FLA.6

TENN. 12N.C.12

S.C.9

VA.12

W. VA.8

PA.38

OHIO24IND.

15ILL.29

WISC.13

KY.13

ME.6

N.H.4

VT.4

MASS.18

R.I. 5CONN. 7

N.J. 14DEL. 3MD. 8

Harding—Republican

Cox—Democratic

Presidential Election of 1920(with electoral vote by state)Cox rashly claimed that “traitors”would vote Republican. But Hardingand Coolidge ran successfully assmall-town boys who had madegood. Harding celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday on election day, andthe voters presented him with thelargest victory margin to date in aU.S. presidential election.

726 CHAPTER 31 The War to End War, 1917–1918

VARYING VIEWPOINTS

Woodrow Wilson: Realist or Idealist?

As the first president to take the United States intoa foreign war, Woodrow Wilson was obliged to

make a systematic case to the American people tojustify his unprecedented European intervention.His ideas have largely defined the character ofAmerican foreign policy ever since—for better orworse.

“Wilsonianism” comprises three closely relatedprinciples: (1) the era of American isolation fromworld affairs has irretrievably ended; (2) the UnitedStates must infuse its own founding political and eco-nomic ideas—including democracy, the rule of law,free trade, and national self-determination (or anti-colonialism)—into the international order; and (3)American influence can eventually steer the worldaway from rivalry and warfare toward a cooperativeand peaceful international system, maintained bythe League of Nations or, later, the United Nations.

Whether that Wilsonian vision constitutes hard-nosed realism or starry-eyed idealism has excitedscholarly debate for nearly a century. “Realists,”such as George F. Kennan and Henry Kissinger,insist Wilson was anything but. They criticize thepresident as a naive, impractical dreamer who failed

to understand that the international order is, andalways will be, an anarchic, unruly arena, outsidethe rule of law, where only military force can effec-tively protect the nation’s security. In a sharp cri-tique in his 1950 study, American Diplomacy,Kennan condemned Wilson’s vision as “moralism-legalism.” In this view Wilson dangerously threat-ened to sacrifice American self-interests on the altarof his admirable but ultimately unworkable ideas.

Wilson’s defenders, including conspicuously hisprincipal biographer, Arthur S. Link, argue that Wil-son’s idealism was in fact a kind of higher realism,recognizing as it did that armed conflict on the scaleof World War I could never again be tolerated andthat some framework of peaceful international rela-tions simply had to be found. The development ofnuclear weapons in a later generation gave thisargument still more force. This “liberal” defense ofWilsonianism derives from the centuries-old liberalfaith that, given sufficient intelligence andwillpower, the world can be made into a betterplace. Realists reject this notion of moral and politi-cal progress as hopelessly innocent, especially asapplied to international affairs.

Chronology

1915 Council of National Defense established

1917 Germany resumes unrestricted submarinewarfare

Zimmermann noteUnited States enters World War IEspionage Act of 1917

1918 Wilson proposes the Fourteen PointsSedition Act of 1918Battle of Château-ThierrySecond Battle of the MarneMeuse-Argonne offensive

1918 Armistice ends World War I

1919 Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles

Wilson’s pro-League tour and collapseEighteenth Amendment (prohibition of

alcohol) passed

1920 Final Senate defeat of Versailles TreatyNineteenth Amendment (woman suffrage)

passedHarding defeats Cox for presidency

Varying Viewpoints 727

Some leftist scholars, such as William ApplemanWilliams, have argued that Wilson was in fact a real-ist of another kind: a subtle and wily imperialistwhose stirring rhetoric cloaked a grasping ambitionto make the United States the world’s dominanteconomic power. Sometimes called “the imperial-ism of free trade,” this strategy allegedly sought todecolonialize the world and open up internationalcommerce not for the good of peoples elsewhere,but to create a system in which American economicmight would irresistibly prevail. This criticism itselfrests on a naive assumption that international rela-tions are a “zero-sum game,” in which one nation’sgain must necessarily be another nation’s loss. In aWilsonian world, Wilson’s defenders claim, all par-ties would be better off; altruism and self-interestare not mutually exclusive.

Still other scholars, especially John MiltonCooper, Jr., emphasize the absence of economic fac-tors in shaping Wilson’s diplomacy. Isolationism, sothis argument goes, held such sway over Americanthinking precisely because the United States hadsuch a puny financial stake abroad—no hard Ameri-can economic interests were mortally threatened in1917, nor for a long time thereafter. In these cir-cumstances Wilson—and the Wilsonians who cameafter him, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt—had nochoice but to appeal to abstract ideals and highprinciples. The “idealistic” Wilsonian strain inAmerican diplomacy, in this view, may be anunavoidable heritage of America’s historically iso-lated situation. If so, it was Wilson’s genius to makepractical use of those ideas in his bid for popularsupport of his diplomacy.

For further reading, see page A21 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.